Ghosts and ghouls haunt the dark recesses of our minds. In times of crisis they come out and create a few moments of anxiety.
Thirty years ago on a Halloween night in the newsroom of WSPA in Spartanburg-Greenville [South Carolina], a call came in of a car jacking. The driver had escaped but her two sons remained in the car. Union County Sheriff’s office began a major search for the car. A reporting team was sent to the area and came back with an interview with the distraught parents, the mother pleading with the carjacker to bring her babies back.
It was the leading sound bite opening the 11 p.m. news. WSPA broke the story. What was supposed to have been a fun night of kids in costumes getting candy soured. I worked overnight at the time. Tommy Colones, the photographer, handed me a tape to uplink as I started my shift.
“CBS is expecting this,” he said as he finished his shift. Switches twitched, coordinates confirmed, tape rolled, checked, and rolled again in New York. The feed contained all necessary material to begin what was to become one of the largest stories I had been involved with: Susan Smith, a hoax carjacking, the ultimate deaths of her two sons, a 30-years-to-life sentence — and a story that continues to this day to haunt the back forty of the mind.
History is filled with stories of haunts from the past. These are useful to shed light on how and why something might be done differently. Susan Smith’s case introduced a new tool from the FBI for solving such crimes. It also opened understanding and studies into the minds of culprits big and small. Today, people understand each case is nuanced and obvious answers may not be the truth.
News coverage, too, has changed. In the mid-’90s, fax machines were one of the few interlinking assets in newsrooms. That night and the following nine days before her arrest, the Union County Sheriff’s Office released a composite sketch of the suspect. Staff and I took hundreds of calls from truck stops, police departments, concerned people and other newsrooms to fax that sketch. Today, a digital post would go worldwide in the blink of an eye.
There were hours of interviews for stations around the world on the progress, the mood, and the angst of the community trying to accept the shock. Susan Smith was arrested for the murder and confessed to it, leading to the trial in Union County in July 1995.
A communications village was created in the parking lot across from the courthouse. News megastars arrived and stood with the courthouse in the background as they covered the big picture. Connections were discovered. The accused was the goddaughter of the sheriff. The lake where the boys were found had been built with South Carolina funding. The legislator who had pushed for that funding had his own charges of malfeasance.
Today, one can go to that lake and see the memorials that were erected by family and strangers in an effort to remember two young innocents lost.
Hauntings be not for the faint of heart. They very often become tools that cause us all to remember, to move forward, and to learn.
That event was a feint, a misdirection — the light at the intersection where the abduction supposedly only worked when the factory next to it was operating, and that factory had been closed for several years. It forever changed the tenor of a place, people and understanding.
Susan Smith will have her first parole hearing Nov. 20 in Columbia, South Carolina. Feints can haunt our minds as we mark another hallowed evening.
Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in The County who graduated from UMPI and earned a master of liberal arts degree from the University of North Carolina. He began his journalism career at WAGM television, worked around the U.S., and later changed careers and taught in China and Korea.
